


Sic Transit Victoria Mundi

by Vituperative_cupcakes



Category: The Man Who Would Be King - Rudyard Kipling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-14
Updated: 2014-10-14
Packaged: 2018-02-21 05:31:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2456564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vituperative_cupcakes/pseuds/Vituperative_cupcakes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three summers and a thousand years ago, Peachey Carnehan tries to let the sun parch the memory from his head.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sic Transit Victoria Mundi

**Author's Note:**

> This story is a hopeless mishmash of the movie and the story. I apologize in advance.

Three summers and a thousand years ago, your servant Peachey Taliaferro Carnahan sat and sweated and died—no! He wished to die. You see, they had taken Peachey, poor Peachey who had never meant any harm, and cut from him, sir. They cut the sense from his head when they cut those bridge-ropes and Peachey fell, fell all the way down and landed on the blighted rock.

Daniel Dravot flew, sir, on account of him being a king.

The queer beast that shambled down Khyber pass was not Peachey in a fashion, just an empty skin you could blow up like a bladder, so no one touched him. Without his hat he grew red as any Indian, and bandits mistook the gibberish he spouted as a strange new dialect. He was saved by the madness, you see.

It was a kindness, being mad, because when the sun went down and sense licked at his ankles Peachey cried. He wailed snotfaced like a child, not like a soldier at all, not like an imperial officer.

_Sic transit gloria mundi._

Ha! _Sic transit victoria mundi_ , more like. He'd bought the lie, like they all had. You've only to march one-two one-two into battle, shed more dacoit blood than your own, bleed and burn and bloody strangle to be considered a soldier. And then what? After you've given your life over to the army, do they recognize you? Do they clap you on the back and say, “here, Peachey, here's a lad”?

That's what started it, your honor. Such a little thing.

Peachey keens in his sleep and Daniel comes down and puts a hand upon him and says, “here Peachey, here's a lad.”

Thank God for Daniel.

No, not him. No use thanking that four-flusher. What good did he ever do anybody anyhow?

Where was him and his holy trousers when it was just Peachey and Danny, wielding arms against a raving battalion of demons? Where was he before that, when the blighters set up such a wailing as you couldn't sleep at night, no matter how you stuffed your ears with cotton wool? Not in that tent. Not in that night. There was only Danny, turning to put an arm around him, saying, “alright Peachey, we're not dead yet.” Danny, who understood without saying. Danny, who could bluff the ferryman out of his coin. Danny, who bloody well knew nothing was alright, nothing was any shade of alright, and said so without words.

It was then that Peachey Carnehan truly became a soldier, for he had Daniel beside him, sir. When the officers fled and the Afghans bore down, Danny was like a wild beast, hurling threats and bullets into their cursed hides.

No one, not a single soul who had called them confidence-men and criminals had been there. No one had seen Danny with a knife clenched in his teeth, firing into the melee. None of them had been in the tent with them that night when Danny surprised him with a kiss. And Peachey shrank back only a moment sir, and only because it had been thousands of miles and centuries since he'd last been kissed. But he could no more refuse Danny than refuse his own self, no matter how foolish, no matter how bloody-minded.

Peachey leaves his hat of in the midday sun. Only to burn out the lump of cold, sir, that Kafiristan left in the back of his head. No matter how he sweats and blisters, the sun is never enough. Danny gathers up his turban and says, “don't be a bloody fool, Peachey. If I haven't got you, I haven’t got nothing.” And Peachey cries where there is no one to see him.

South, he thinks. He must go south.

The mountains throb in the dark and the moon spins colors and Peachey fears he will fall up, up into that endless sky. But Danny shades him with his body and says, “nevermind that, Peachey, it's a big thing we're doing.” Danny takes him in hand, caresses him with Peachey's own crippled fingers, makes him wail with longing for the past.

They were to be kings, plural, but that had never truly been in the plan, had it? Peachey had always supported Daniel, because he alone knew the value of the man. Daniel had proved he could be a good man, when the chips came down. Even if he were a little bullheaded, good god, it was practically a virtue in these parts.

Oh Daniel, Danny, if only your reach hadn't exceeded your grasp. If only you could be satisfied with poor Peachey and his kindness. He was so kind you couldn't see how crushed he was when you said, “wife, not woman.” He crushed the hurt so far down he trampled it with his boots.

No one had to lie to Peachey about a conqueror’s son. He didn't have to believe in God to start worshiping Daniel Dravot. He worried that others could see it, like that Utar bloke who offered his own sons so readily. He and Danny weren't like that, not really. It was an understanding, just between they. Sometimes he caught Billy Fish looking at them, and the gurkha would give him a curt nod.

Billy Fish. He'd turned out to be the best of them, after all. Peachey had always thought Danny the best, but then Danny had grown too big for his britches and Peachey—bloody Peachey, never could say no,could he? Clever Peachey, always scheming and dreaming up new ways for them to get the accolades they obviously deserved.

Danny hadn't tasted real respect in so long he got a little mad on it. Peachey couldn't blame him, no, not when they were both drunk on each other like that. Danny would come to him when they were alone—they truly were alone sometimes, such an improvement over her majesty's service—and they would plan and plot and bask in the warm rays of the future.

And Danny had to go spoiling that.

Wife. Not woman.

Bloody hell, Danny and his wife. What could a wife do? Look down her nose at your exploits and suck up all your money. Wives had no camaraderie, wives wouldn't do the things they'd done together. But when Peachey tried, oh, how he tried, to tell Danny about it, Danny dismissed it with a wave of his hand. As if it were nothing. As if they'd been nothing. And stupid Peachey had to go and be hurt instead of slapping some sense back into him. And that was the ruin of everything.

All Peachey's soul wanted to do was fly off, go find Danny where he lay in the sky, torn by an endless wind. But he had to go south now.

Danny, damn him, had wanted to die quickly. A bullet to the head, a spear in the back. Maybe even a knock from a rifle butt. But never a tumble from such a height. And he took forever to fall because he rode the currents like a maple seed. Danny had paradoxically assumed he'd live forever sir, and Peachey believed right alongside him. Peachey was a man of simple faith, of the denomination that if a man were to put his back to the wheel, his cunning, he could forge a way in the world. And look where it had got them. On a bare yellow road with the sun sleeting down like hot lead.

South, south.

Brother Kipling waits and the ink is not yet dry on the contract.

South.

Peachey is fixed on south now, back. If only, he reasons, if only he can get back to Marwar junction, he can grab Danny before he gets off the train, before they blackmailed the raj and before they signed the contract. Before they promised each other the bloody end.

South.

Back.

_The Son of God goes forth to war,_   
_a kingly crown to gain;_   
_his blood red banner streams afar:_   
_who follows in his train?_

 

 


End file.
